This study investigates experienced teachers’ resistance in an era of neoliberalism in Macau. The narratives of three experienced teachers are examined under a post-structuralist framework. The findings indicate that the traditional Chinese Confucian ideology of education guides the experienced teachers’ professional practice and offers them an alternative subject position to inhabit that makes it possible for them to establish a critical distance from the prevailing norms imposed by the hegemony of neoliberalism. Such a distance allows the experienced teachers to observe, to think otherwise and consequently to live out a different teaching life and to reassemble their identity around an empowered notion of self. The study concludes that the Confucian ideology of education has contributed to the transformation of the contemporary discursive context of Macau by promising a future for education, a future with a revisioned future rather than a neoliberal incorporation of the past.

This article argues that ideas from the ancient past supply insight about the future of Chinese universities. I make this case by outlining three claims about the nature and purpose of education in Homer, Plato, and Augustine. I propose that conversations based on these ideas illuminate central underlying problems facing Chinese higher education today: Educating the next generation to be properly assertive and make complex judgments, and helping faculty see their own motives and impact clearly. To show this, I explain why discussions of ancient Western authors are useful for the present moment, explaining what vistas these texts open. I conclude by clarifying how the exercise can help China achieve its educational goals.

As the Chinese mainland has transitioned from elite to mass higher education, the race to attend university has escalated to become a race to attend selective universities. This study focuses on rural female university students and explores how they make sense of their higher education admission experiences. We rationalize that the inquiry into fairness is crystallized through examining rural female students’ voices, which remain largely marginalized from the literature. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 22 rural female undergraduates from five selective universities in northern China, we focus on their perspectives towards three key issues in higher education admission: entrance exams, region-based quotas that put them at distinct disadvantages, and new reform initiatives.

Good alumni relations are key to universities and colleges winning support from their graduates. With reference to social capital theory, an important problem in establishing strong alumni relations is how to turn alumni resources, an important university social network, into productive, public, and abundant capital. Based on the established alumni relation framework, the authors have investigated three major universities in China by means of interview so as to source factors that affect their social capital transformations. The three dimensions of cognition, relationship, and structure are the focus of this paper. The authors probe into solutions as follows: Firstly, establishing clear and appropriate values between institutions, alumni, and other stakeholders, and striving to reach the greatest degree of consensus possible; secondly, forming a partnership to meet needs in general based on close personal relations; thirdly, making sure that there are enough functional organizations, venues and channels to establish and maintain relationships with alumni in a holistic and well structured way.